NHS professionals across Fife obtain crucial data via TrakCare

Frontline staff in all of NHS Fife’s acute and community hospitals are now using real-time information to further deliver patient care after going live with InterSystems’ TrakCare.

The 10 hospitals will be able to work more efficiently and replace outdated technology and restrictive paper based ways of working, with the new electronic patient record (EPR).

TrakCare creates a consolidated view of each patient’s history where data is entered once then immediately made available to all authorised care providers.

The health board confirmed its decision to deploy TrakCare last June as part of plans to move to a single EPR for patients, providing authorised clinical staff access to important patient information.

Mark Palmer, InterSystems UK and Ireland country manager said: “NHS Fife is a powerful example of clinical engagement, collaboration, and determination to ensure that technology addresses hospital needs so that the best is achieved for patient care”.

NHS Fife’s eHealth staff worked closely with clinicians to deploy TrakCare on 1 April 2017. More than 80% of NHS Fife’s employees are now trained to use the system, which, according to Scott McLean, chief operating officer for acute services, is making health records, referral and waiting list processes more efficient.

“Importantly, TrakCare brings into line information that is used across acute, mental health and community services, making it easier to share information across services in good time and support clinical decision making”, McLean said.

“A further benefit of TrakCare is that it includes real-time bed management processes; this means that we can access real-time bed occupancy across the whole of NHS Fife and get a picture of how many people are in our hospital.”

Phase one of the deployment has now been completed, making NHS Fife the eleventh of Scotland’s 14 health boards to use the TrakCare system. The system is the dominant EPR in Scotland.

Deployment first commenced in the health board’s emergency department, before quickly spreading to other clinical areas.

Phase two of the project will see the expansion of TrakCare to deliver additional functionality including order communications, which will streamline the flow of important information between diagnostic departments and frontline clinical staff.

Mental health administration will also be an important part of phase two, with the health board working with InterSystems to identify other areas of application.

NHS Fife provides healthcare to 370,000 residents of Fife and employs about 8,500 staff.